Not Human, Not a Merman
by Fire and Sand
Summary: The Nightmares are just beginning. At twelve, Nami has to join the Arlong crew and work for the man who killed Bellemere. No wonder she has nightmares. But as the only girl and the only human in Arlong Park, the only person willing to comfort her is...?


Fire: I'm Fire no Kumo. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu! And this is my co-writer!

Sasuke: Hn.

Fire: --;; Um...he's from the Naruto series, so if you don't know him, that's okay. As for my consultant for the One Piece fandom, I have... (looks around)

Zoro: (sleeping) Zzzzz...

Fire: Um...

Luffy: (stares blankly at the screen) ...

Fire: Luffy, you're facing the wrong way. --;;

Luffy: (turns around and faces the audience) Oh! I thought it looked too empty. (grins absentmindedly)

Fire: --;; Um...

Nami: I refuse to write something like this! (points furiously at the fanfic)

Fire: Then...

Robin: (reading and ignoring Fire) ...

Fire: I guess...

Sanji: Robin-chwan! Nami-swan! (focussing entirely on the girls)

Fire: I guess I don't have a choice.

Usopp: I knew it. (trying to sound cool) There is no other choice. You need the help of the GREAT CAPTAIN USOPP!

Fire: Chopper! (runs to the reindeer)

Usopp: O.O;;; Hey! I'm over here!

Fire: (hugging Chopper) Anyway, this is just a little thought while I was watching the Arlong Arc. No spoilers unless you haven't seen the Arlong Arc. Um, that's up to episode 44 of the anime or chapter 95, volume 11 of the manga. I'm counting the entire arc so if you've seen at least up to episode 37 or to the end of volume 10, ie chapter 90, it's okay.

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Disclaimer: Hm... (stares at a mirror) If you mistake me for Oda-sensei, I'd be very surprised. With my sadistic tendencies, everyone would suffer horribly before dying. Then, if I feel like it, I might bring them back to life. If you're reading my Naruto series, you'd know _exactly_ what I'm talking about.

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Note: All Japanese terms were used for artistic purposes. If you need a translation, please click on the link to the Fire and Sand user profile for the glossary. However, some terms are omitted from the glossary due to common sense. If you watch or read the One Piece anime or manga and still don't know what a nakama, mikan, Akuma no Mi, etc. are... Um...you should.

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Warning: I don't want people to send me notes about the spelling so I'll explain the OP terms used in this fic. First, Zoro is spelled Zoro. If you haven't read the notes that Oda-sensei published for the translation of his characters' names into other languages, don't come talking to me about it. Send me your email address and I'll send them to you. They're straightforward if you can read Japanese. If you can't, I'll add in a translation free of charge. As for the place names, Cocoyashi is spelled with C's not K's. If you've seen the maps in the OP artbooks, you'd see for yourself. If you haven't seen them, I can send you a map. I kept mura instead of village for the sake of continuity. She was speaking in Japanese, so the sentence flowed better with the Japanese term. Linguistic consistency, right? If you have any other comments, please send them to me. I'll do my best to answer your questions and reply to your thoughts.

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**Not Human, Not a Merman**

**A Fire Project**

**Oneshot**

**S** unny days were the worst, because it was on a sunny day that they appeared and threw her into this nightmare. On sunny days, the torment haunting her sleep never subsided. Not even Hachi's comforting tentacles soothed her.

By far, Hachi wasn't like any of the mermen. He was naive, easy to fool, funny, and he treated her like a real member of the crew, unlike the other mermen. For a child that was thrust into this life, she was grateful, even though she never once forgot that he was also one of her captors.

But when the nightmares of Arlong came in the middle of the night, it was still good to curl against protective arms and have someone fight against the bad dreams.

"Bellemere-san..." Nami mumbled as she curled into a tighter ball. Again. It was the same nightmare again. "No!" Her sleeping hands reached for her mother, but there was no one for her to hold. "BELLEMERE-SAN!"

**S** unny days were annoying, because on sunny days, Hachi couldn't sleep. He didn't know why the orange-haired girl always ran to him in the middle of the night, but she always did, no matter what he said to her. But what could he say to a girl who watched him with watery eyes every time he tried to refuse? Nami, the girl who bit her trembling lip when Arlong yelled at her, who held her fear with tight fists so that no one else saw... Nami, who cried when she thought no one was watching... Hachi wasn't nearly cold-hearted enough to ignore her.

But he needed to sleep! Every time he allowed her to sleep with him, _this_ happened.

"BELLEMERE-SAN!" She never stopped screaming.

And Arlong had ordered him—and a few other members of their crew—to gather the next tribute payments from the villages to the far east of the island. He needed to sleep!

"Oi, Kuroobi," Hachi said as he knocked on his nakama's door. "Kuroobi!" He shouted as loudly as he could, without waking the orange-haired girl curled in his tentacles. "Oi!"

After a while, Kuroobi opened his door, stared at Hachi, looked at Nami, then slammed the door in the octopus-man's face. "No," he said through the door. "I have to wake up early and go _with _you. Definitely no." He wasn't going to hold Nami for Hachi, not after the sleepless night he had to endure the night before.

The six armed octopus-man stared at the closed door for a moment before moving to the next room. He wasn't going to give up. If he had to, he would order one of the crew to take her!

Unfortunately, the weaker members of their crew were either already in deep sleep or ignoring his knocks. At least, Chu definitely was ignoring him. Hachi had banged on his nakama's door with so many tentacles that even the wood looked bruised.

"HACHI!" The deep, furious growl came from down the hall where Arlong stood. "It's the middle of the night!" And he was trying to sleep!

"But..." Hachi knew better than to argue with Arlong. "You see, I have to wake up early tomorrow and—"

"Onegai, Bellemere-san," Nami sobbed.

The soft words were enough to draw Arlong's attention to the tiny girl. "Hachi," he said sternly, holding himself with firm resolve not to kill their cartographer. He still needed her to map the ocean floors. "Next time, _leave her in her room_." He tried not to run over, grab the girl from the octopus' arms and throw her into her room. "If you want to sleep, _don't let her into your room again_."

" O-okay," Hachi said disappointedly as he looked at the girl curled in his tentacles. He admitted that he was reluctant to let her go. He wasn't saying that he _liked_ humans. He hated humans as much as Arlong did! But it was _Nami_. She wasn't _human_. She was a merman, like the rest of them. "Gomen, Nami-chan." His free tentacles wiggled uncomfortably as he laid her on her small bed. He didn't want to leave her when she was having horrible nightmares, but he had a job to do! Arlong wouldn't hesitate to kill him if he didn't do his duty.

With his arms waving behind him, he quickly ran out of the room. If he stayed any longer, he would have picked the crying girl up again.

**S**unny days were frustrating. If Nami would only fall asleep in the map room at the top of the building as often as she did when she first joined his crew, he wouldn't have known about her nightmares. At first, he thought that they would stop. At least, he had thought they would stop _eventually_. But even after a year, the screams still travelled through the walls into his room.

Her room was next to his.

He had thought it was a good idea when he assigned it to her. It was the furthest from the stairs. If she tried to escape—not that she would have anywhere to go, but _if_ she tried to escape—he would be nearby to catch her. And even if he didn't catch her, she would need to get past every other member of his crew from his room at the top of the building, to the last room by the door at the bottom.

But after a year, he was reconsidering the decision to assign that room to her.

" Kuso," he growled as he stared at the shivering girl who was wrapped carelessly in tangled blankets. He wanted to shut her up. Even after Hachi left the tiny cartographer in her room, she was still screaming in her sleep. "Nami!" He shouted angrily, his webbed hand reaching forwards, aiming for her neck, but stopping before it could reach her. It would be easy to snap her head off, but he _needed_ her maps!

Instead of Nami, he wrapped his large hands around the knotted blankets, pulled them from her, shook it apart and threw it over the orange-haired girl. As long as she was a part of his crew, Nami wasn't human. But he refused to call her a merman.

And a hybrid between a human and a merman was horrifically disgusting.

"I need to sleep too, damn it!" He laid a webbed hand on the girl's warm forehead. If he pressed even a little, he could easily crush her head.

"Onegai..."

The merman frowned. The hand above her head shook with anger. If he had to hear that dead woman's name one more time, he would definitely crush her head.

"...Arlong-san..."

Arlong stared, his hand curling back in surprise, as if her soft words had snapped at him. Her voice never held such pain—or such surprisingly polite tones—when she was awake.

"Cocoyashi Mura-wo..." Nami curled into a ball, muffling her watery words before he could hear the rest of the sentence.

But Arlong already knew what she was going to say. _'Release her village, huh?'_ He sank onto the edge of the small bed, his mind embedded in deep thought as he sighed irritatedly. _'And I had wondered what she was dreaming about.'_ He should have known it was something as transparent as this. "I said I'd keep my promise," he said to himself. "What are you screaming for?"

"Onegai..."

Even though he didn't say it, they both knew why she was screaming. He had no intention of truly letting her go, of letting go of the village that bound her to his crew.

"Onegai, Arlong."

Because he needed her. Even though he wouldn't admit that he needed her, it was the truth. And no matter how he tried to hide it, it was still there, gnawing at the edge of his pride.

"Atashi-wo..."

Even as he shielded her from the nightmares, he was torturing her with the promise of new horrors.

"Atashi-wo hanase."

Even as he fought the tears staining her face, he cut deep wounds that would never heal. Because letting her go was the only thing he couldn't do, all he could do was hurt her, and try to hang onto her forever.

**End Oneshot**

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Moral of the Story:

No one can be strong forever. At times, the world can be overwhelming, especially when the past looms heavily overhead. But among those with closed hearts, there are also those with kind ones that will lend a hand (or a tentacle) if asked. Then there are those who try without being asked. Without being recognized. For pride? Or for fear of emotions that oppose every ideal in their bodies?

Fire's English tidbits for those who care:

Here's a problem that I come across in a lot of OP fanfics. OOC characters. For those of you who have no idea what OOC is, I'll give you an explanation. OOC stands for "out of character," and it refers to the times your character isn't acting like himself or herself. People have unique ways of doing things, ways of saying things, ways of acting and ways of thinking. They have their own sets of vocabulary, lists of behavioural routines and habits. Having mentioned this, the characters of your fandom should NEVER BE OOC, and if they are, there has to be a good reason for it, like you've gradually developed them into these characters from Oda-sensei's original personalities. I don't read stories where the characters don't act like themselves. Now, how do you know when your character is OOC? It's not as simple as a lot of people think. There are really obvious cases where you notice right away, but the almost undetectable ones are the stories that reduce the characters to one or two-dimensional beings. Remember that everyone has reasons for acting the way they do. If the thoughts that the characters have don't belong to them, the actions they take won't belong to them either. So here are two examples for those of you who want better explanations.

First, we all know that Usopp is a coward and he lies a lot, but he can also be brave, kind, caring, smart and funny. He doesn't faint as easily as a lot of people assume. I'm not saying that he won't faint or fall to the ground in fear, or freeze in fear. But he won't lose consciousness! Even if it looked like he lost consciousness, he'd probably be faking it, because that's the kind of person that Usopp is. At that point, someone else―someone who isn't Luffy, since Luffy can't see through tricks like that―would say that he was lying and drag him up anyway. --;; It sounds obvious but there are so many times that I've seen Usopp lose consciousness over practically nothing. This is an exaggeration of only one of his qualities. At that point, the character loses the other parts of himself and becomes a flat―ie. one dimensional or two dimensional―character. If you reduce a character's qualities to nothing like that, it speaks for your inability to capture the character's true qualities and personality. In other words, go and write an original story instead of a fanfic. You're creating a new character with the same name only, not the character in the anime or the manga.

Another way of keeping the character in character is through their thoughts. Nami doesn't focus on money all the time. If money is the main topic, that's her focus. If something else is the main topic where money isn't even in the conversation, her main focus wouldn't be on money. She would still be thinking about it, in the back of her mind, but she wouldn't show it unless there was a reason to mention it. She doesn't just bring up money for no reason! You wouldn't mention random things in the middle of a conversation, and neither would your characters. Again, doing this would reduce the character to a flat character. If the people in your story don't act like themselves, they're OOC. If they're going to be OOC, mention it in your disclaimer or summary. If you can't see what's wrong with them, there are probably a lot of other people in the fandom that can tell you.

Fire's babbling:

Fire: (looking at the tidbits) Hm...haven't written a tidbit this long in a wh―

Nami: (shouting angrily) You're insane! (tries to hit Fire)

Fire: (dodges Nami's fist) Waah! (runs away) Nami, I'm not saying that there was _anything_ other than a hate/hate relationship between you and Arlong! (hides behind Sanji) But―

Nami: Do I _look_ like a merman to you?!

Fire: Um...please review. If Nami doesn't kill me, I'll reply to you.

Zoro: (still sleeping) Zzzz...

Fire: Sasuke! Help me!

Chopper: (talking to Sasuke) Interesting, and you say that you can breathe fire _without_ the power of an Akuma no Mi?

Luffy: Sugoi!

Fire: Usopp! (runs behind Usopp)

Usopp: Waah! Don't bring her over here!

Fire: Waah! Nami's _really_ going to kill me!

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